John Steinbeck | John Steinbeck
Jan.24.2012
Book titles are tricky. Sometimes they come to you naturally and easily and sometimes (most of the time) they’re more evasive. John Steinbeck said, “I have never been a title man. I don’t give a damn what it is called.” But I do. I think titles are important.
Tennessee Williams said, “The...
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Jan.14.2012
I read something the other day that destroyed my comforting delusion that if I died suddenly my unproduced or unpublished manuscripts would eventually be discovered and produced or published and my genius hailed.
Novelist and teacher Les Gorn (``The Anglo Saxons’’), writing for the Cedar Street...
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Sep.16.2011
No, I'm not writing about John Steinbeck today. (Although, just for the record, I've read 5 of his novels and really the only one I liked was East of Eden. However, I seriously liked that one. I thought it was phenomenal & couldn't put it down.)
What I am writing about today is how often the...
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Jul.02.2011
Were Steinbeck and Hemingway both paranoid? Was Iris Chang?
Today is the the 50th anniversary of Hemingway's suicide with a shotgun in Ketchum, Idaho. Writer-biographer A.E. Hotchner wrote about it yesterday for the New York Times. The link to it is attached below. It is fascinating reading....
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Jun.25.2011
Talked over the phone to a friend from high school the other day, George Edens. George and I both wrestled at Kirkwood High in Missouri, outside St. Louis. George was pretty good, though no match for me.
Wrestlng's been on my mind lately. The other day I talked to the very fine poet, or poetess if...
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Mar.19.2011
If you live on California's Monterey Peninsula, Big Sur to the south (``Big South'') is like an exotic cousin or friend who is slightly different than you and me.
That's probably why it has a literary record of attracting the offbeat and different, say Jack Kerouac (``Big Sur'') and Henry Miller...
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Mar.05.2011
I came across Kevin Coyne quite by accident. A video. The song ``Talking to No One.'' It immediately spoke to me. The lyrics, ``Talking to no one is strange. Talking to someone is stranger.''
Then there was ``House on the Hill.'' A friend, Ron Horner, heard it before me. He warned, ``It is pretty...
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Feb.28.2011
This morning's Monterey, California, Herald included front page stories involving Hemingway and Steinbeck. What are the odds of that, two major deceased American writers on the front page of a daily on the same day?
The Steinbeck story, by Kevin Howe, is about the late Dick Hayman, a passionate...
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Feb.08.2011
Glad to see Keith Olbermann is going with Current TV, sometime later this year. It needs something to bump up its profile. It's a noble project, providing programming gratis where it is needed, as I understand it, often to poor countries.
But it needs more viewers. I'm on its internet site, in a...
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Nov.10.2010
Tomorrow I take Steinbeck's sage advice and "Head West, young man!" (okay, in this case, woman). Yes sir, I am leaving Oklahoma for the land of milk and honey...and librarians. I'll be speaking Saturday at the California School Librarians Conference with four other amazing writers -...
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